As reported by The Washington Post today (4/4/12), recently announced Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate for the Egyptian Presidency, Dr. Khairat Al-Shater, Deputy Chairman of the MB, has affirmed his commitment to implementing Sharia -- Islamic Law -- in post-Mubarak Egypt.
Yesterday (Tuesday 4/3/12) El-Shater met with the Jurisprudence Commission for Rights and Reform. This umbrella group of Islamic scholars, including MB and Salafist party representatives, was established after last year's uprising against President Hosni Mubarak as a coalition to represent the popular traditionalist Islamic political factions. According to the Post report,
The group, called the Jurisprudence Commission for Rights and Reform, said in a posting on its Facebook page that el-Shater promised that, if elected, he would form a council of clerics to review legislation to ensure it adheres to Islamic Shariah law.
Predictably, the Post also reports, "A Brotherhood spokesman could not immediately confirm the offer."
Al-Shater's promise to the Jurisprudence Commission for Rights and Reform served as a reminder of the MB's 2007 political platform that included a similar provision, mandating that parliament consult with a religious council of clerics when drafting legislation to assure compliance with Islam's religio-political totalitarian Sharia. Salient features of the 2007 180-page draft platform included the proposed the establishment of the Supreme Council of Clerics, to whom the Egyptian president and legislative branches must defer on issues of conformity to the Sharia. The platform document also stated that women and non-Muslims were barred from serving as president of Egypt, and further stipulated that international agreements signed by past governments -- including the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty -- were to be reexamined and brought to a public referendum.
Over thirty years ago, in 1979, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh described the perverse phenomenon -- borne of complete Western rejection -- that nevertheless caused an "amalgamation" of Islamic and Western values in the warped political language of Islam's contemporary theocrats. The Muslim Brotherhood -- then and now -- represents the apotheosis of that totalitarian Islamic trend:
When calling for an Islamic totalitarian Republic, wherein the ulama hoped to restore God's will in history, they used Western concepts of democracy, liberty, equality etc.... All of these contemporary religious leaders in Islam were raised and nourished by the literary activity of the Modernists who consciously blurred the differences between East and West. Hence we may understand the unintelligible [note: to Westerners with their wits about them!] phenomenon of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, talking about Islamic democracy and freedom while cultivating a vision of an Islamic State, which is certainly a far cry from any Western democracy.
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